Why Do Millennials Not Understand Racism?

They think if we ignore skin color, racism will somehow disappear.

Millennials see racism as a matter of different treatment, justified by race, that you solve by removing race from the equation.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Shutterstock.

When you hear MTV, you don’t think
“research.” But, for the last few years, the music television channel
has been building a public affairs campaign to address bias called “Look
Different.” Aimed at millennials, it seeks to help them deal with
prejudice and discrimination in their lives. And as part of the project,
MTV has worked with pollsters to survey a nationally representative
sample of people ages 14 to 24 to measure how young people are
“experiencing, affected by, and responding to issues associated with
bias.”

Overall, MTV confirms the general view of millennials: Compared with
previous generations, they’re more tolerant and diverse and profess a
deeper commitment to equality and fairness. At the same time, however,
they’re committed to an ideal of colorblindness that leaves them
uncomfortable with race, opposed to measures to reduce racial
inequality, and a bit confused about what racismis.

All of this is apparent in the findings.
Ninety-one percent of respondents “believe in equality” and believe
“everyone should be treated equally.” Likewise, 84 percent say their
families taught them to treat everyone the same, no matter their race,
and 89 percent believe everyone should be treated as equals. With that
said, only 37 percent of respondents (30 percent of whites and 46
percent of minorities) say they were raised in families that talk about
race.

For this reason, perhaps, a majority of millennials say that their
generation is “post-racial.” Seventy-two percent believe their
generation believes in equality more than older people, and 58 percent
believe that as they get older, racism will become less of an issue.
It’s almost certainly true that this view is influenced by the presence
of President Obama. Sixty-two percent believe that having a black
president shows that minorities have the same opportunities as whites,
and 67 percent believe it proves that race is not a “barrier to
accomplishments.”

It’s no surprise, then, that most millennials aspire to
“colorblindness.” Sixty-eight percent say “focusing on race prevents
society from becoming colorblind.” As such, millennials are hostile to
race-based affirmative action: 88 percent believe racial preferences are
unfair as a matter of course, and 70 percent believe they are unfair
regardless of “historical inequalities.” Interestingly, the difference
between whites and people of color is nonexistent on the first question
and small (74 percent versus 65 percent) on the second. But this might
look different if you disaggregated “people of color” by race. There’s a
chance that black millennials are more friendly to affirmative action
than their Latino or Asian peers.

For all of these aspirations, however, millennials have a hard time
talking about race and discrimination. Although 73 percent believe that
we should talk “more openly” about bias, only 20 percent say they’re
comfortable doing so—despite the fact that a plurality of minorities say
that their racial identities shape their views of the world.

Millennials have a hard time talking about race and discrimination.

What’s more, for all of their unity on tolerance and equality, white
and minority millennials have divergent views on the status of whites
and minorities in society. Forty-one percent of white millennials say
that the government “pays too much attention to the problems of racial
minority groups while 65 percent of minorities say that whites have more
opportunities.” More jarring is the 48 percent of white millennials who
say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination
against racial minorities. With that in mind, it’s worth a quick look
at a 2012 poll
from the Public Religion Research Institute, where 58 percent of white
millennials said that discrimination against whites was as big a problem
as discrimination against minorities.

It’s hard to say which is the “true” number, but there’s no doubt
that a substantial plurality of young white people believe their race is
a disadvantage, which is ludicrous given the small number who say that
they’ve felt excluded because of their race (10 percent) or say that
they’ve been hurt by racial offenses (25 percent).

But while this reaction doesn’t seem to have a basis in reality, it
makes perfect sense given what millennials writ large believe about
racism. Let’s go back to the results on colorblindness and affirmative
action. Seventy-three percent believe that “never considering race would
improve society,” and 90 percent say that “everyone should be treated
the same regardless of race.”

From these results, it’s clear that—like most Americans—millennials
see racism as a matter of different treatment, justified by race, that
you solve by removing race from the equation. If we ignore skin color in
our decisions, then there can’t be racism.

The problem is that racism isn’t reducible to “different treatment.”
Since if it is, measures to ameliorate racial inequality—like the Voting
Rights Act—would be as “racist” as the policies that necessitated them.
No, racism is better understood as white supremacy—anything that
furthers a broad hierarchy of racist inequity, where whites possess the
greatest share of power, respect, and resources, and blacks the least.

And the magic of white supremacy is that its presence is obscured by
the focus on race. When a black teenager is unfairly profiled by police,
we say it’s “because of the color of his skin,” which—as a
construction—avoids the racism at play, from the segregated neighborhood
the officer patrols to the pervasive belief in black criminality that
shapes our approach to crime. Likewise, it obscures the extent to which
this isn’t just different treatment— it’s unequal treatment rooted in unequal conditions.

Millennials have grown up in a world where we talk about race without
racism—or don’t talk about it at all—and where “skin color” is the
explanation for racial inequality, as if ghettos are ghettos because
they are black, and not because they were created. As such, their views on racism—where you fight bias by denying it matters to outcomes—are muddled and confused.

Which gets to the irony of this survey: A generation that hates
racism but chooses colorblindness is a generation that, through its
neglect, comes to perpetuate it.

The thing about color blindness is that it leaves the history unremembered and forgotten which can allow it to be redone again in the future. History is to be learned and remember not to do it again and it's wrong. That's the purpose.

What’s more, for all of their unity on tolerance and equality, white
and minority millennials have divergent views on the status of whites
and minorities in society. Forty-one percent of white millennials say
that the government “pays too much attention to the problems of racial
minority groups while 65 percent of minorities say that whites have more
opportunities.” More jarring is the 48 percent of white millennials who
say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination
against racial minorities. With that in mind, it’s worth a quick look
at a 2012 poll
from the Public Religion Research Institute, where 58 percent of white
millennials said that discrimination against whites was as big a problem
as discrimination against minorities.

Rofl.

Minority millennials are in for a rude awakening regarding race as they hit
their 20s, especially once they hit the workforce and college and see discrimination is real.

Most of the ones who think that way are the ones who grew up in the suburbs, in diverse environments most likely raised by parents who assimilated like hell to get them into certain neighborhoods because they wanted the american dream. What they failed to realize is that, yes you have more opportunities, but never think you are on equal footing. People can talk that colorblindness sh*t but when something goes missing yo black ass the first to be looked at

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot create polls in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum